The first day of ShriTeq witnessed enormous participation and the second day promises to be even better. We are sure that it will bring more excitement and surprises.

SHRITEQ 2016

ISSUE II

Friday, 21st October, 2016.

For a few years now, the coming of ShriTeq has always transformed our mundane and monotonous school lives into something exciting and adventurous. Below are a few changes that we observe over the two thrilling days.

began yesterday with junior events like Scratch Coding, the Teq Quiz, Poster Making and the Hackathon. Today, senior events will be held, and they promise to be resounding successes. Our school flaunted the innovation, enthusiasm, and intelligence of its students with activities designed to challenge and intrigue them. Children from 22 schools participated in ShriTeq and excitedly explored our campus. The tunnel created next to the reception impressed many with its hologram, and stalls showcased products like 3D Doodle Pencils and iPhone 7’s. The day wouldn’t have been possible without the efforts of the volunteers, council members, and judges. En-joy day two of ShriTeq 2016, which we know will not disappoint!

1. Shiny new Audis are standing in the driveway, gleaming in the sunlight. Students marvel at them, wondering how the IT department is showered with such an obscene amount of money. 2. Logos are plastered all over the walls making it look like campaign week. Students wander around baffled, trying to determine which nominee is named Kajaria. 3. Fancy 3D printers are set up around which rowdy juniors grovel for miniature plastic models.

4. Rooms full of students tapping away at laptops and sipping cold coffee dot the school. Passionately trying to bring glory to their family names, these young techies work tirelessly at their assignments for hours on end. 5. The new and improved gym houses the most mouthwatering, buttery and crunchy samosas to be made in Moulsari in years as well as warm tea and brownies for participants and volunteers.

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Scratch is a user friendly platform for programming that introduces budding programmers to the world of animation. Scratch Coding is a new event that was introduced for the first time this year and caused much excitement amongst students from the participating teams. The competition had twelve participating teams with two members in each. These participants, as young as nine years old, sat intently in front of their computers with their headsets and made animations on one of the four topics -

“....and I just couldn’t breathe”

“One day I woke up to find that the world had turned black and white!”

“Hey! Stop that bully”

“I wish…” The topics were interpreted by each of the teams in an extremely mature and creative manner. The stories behind the animations ranged from their dreams to fly to the moon, to how they have noticed that bullies act the way they do because they themselves are in need. A buzz of excitement prevailed in the Senior Computer Lab, and the enthusiasm each team showed for Scratch and their school was delightful to see. The teams produced good quality animations, and The Shri Ram School, Aravali, emerged as the winners of this competition. The Delhi Public School, Gurgaon, won second place, followed by Pathways World School, Aravali, in third.

The Teq Quiz was the central event of Shri Tech 2016. The qualification round comprised a written test. From a total of twenty-one teams, twelve teams qualified for the Semi Finals. Six teams then competed for a position in the finals. Each quiz consisted of four rounds, each of which commenced with an audience question. The audience consisted of students of Classes four and five from The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar. Their enthusiasm and fervour was quite apparent throughout the event. The buzzer round generated the most interest for the audience as well as the participants. The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar, Sanskriti School, Pathways School, Gurgaon, DPS Rohini, Vasant Valley School and Pa thways Wor ld School eventua l ly qua l i f i ed for the f ina l s . The finals of the Junior Teq Quiz were quite thrilling, both to watch and to participate in.

This quiz also had an audience round with twelve students from the audience winning prizes and being invited onstage. The host, Mr. Rajiv Makhni, never failed to pump up the participants and kept the audience engaged and entertained with his delightful sense of humour. Ms. Suchi Mukherjee, the chief guest and keynote speaker, delivered a touching speech about the need for curiosity in the modern world, recounting her academic struggle while studying in Cambridge and how she persevered and thought of a way through it, achieving a record-breaking score. With the teams negotiating the troughs and crests as the finals progressed, the peak of excitement was reached with the ‘Buzzer Round’ which resulted in a very close contest between two teams, Sanskriti School and The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar. The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar emerged victorious much to the delight of the audience.

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The ‘Hackathon’ competition revolved around the creation of a theme-centric software. The coders, in teams of four, were asked to create a web or mobile app that would tackle the problems faced by travellers. Tagore International School started working on an app that would connect travellers to local residents to provide them with recommendations. Mother’s International School created a program that would enable users to read about other travellers’ experiences. Delhi Public School, R.K Puram worked on a similar web app to connect users with residents and previous travellers. The Shri Ram School, Aravali conceptualized a site where users could collectively invest a certain amount of money to win a trip to a destination of their choosing. Pathways School put together a site that consolidated all aspects of a trip, including food, stay and travel. Delhi Public School, Rohini focussed on user interface and coding while Amity School integrated Instagram into their work. Delhi Public School, Vasant Kunj worked on an app which would allow users to arrange for tickets and transport to events in their vicinity. Shiv Nadar School worked on a site which curated relatively unknown places in major tourist destinations for avid travellers. The Shri Ram School, Moulsari worked on a travel log that would integrate maps and photos to create a sort of digital scrapbook that other users could see as well. Every school worked with enthusiasm and worked steadily throughout the day. The ardent programmers will present their final product tomorrow, on the last day of ShriTeq.

One of the most interesting competitions held was Poster Making for the junior classes. The competition was a big success as fifteen schools turned up to create posters on many unique topics. Each team consisted of two participants and were given a choice to make their posters on either one of the following: E-Waste or Cyber Bullying. The posters were judged on their relevance to the topic and overall presentation. Sarika ma’am and Sanchita ma’am were two of the esteemed guests who came to help with the competition. In two hours, beautiful work emerged from these young, creative minds. After an intense competition, the winners were announced. The third prize was given to Tagore International School. The second prize to Pathways School, Gurgaon and the first prize, was given to The Shri Ram School, Vasant Vihar.

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ShriTeq would not be half as successful as it is without the guidance and aid of our guests, judges and speakers. We proudly introduce you to their incredible people. Mr. Sukhvinder Ahuja was the special guest for today’s event. He is an integral part of the Microsoft Leadership Sales Team. He has over 22 years of working experience with companies like IBM, Nortel and PwC. His hobbies include driving, listening to light music and working with technology. Ms. Suchi Mukherjee was the keynote speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Limeroad. A technophile and an entrepreneur, she has rewritten the rules of the e-commerce game in India. Ms. Yogita Bhalla, the judge for the Scratch Coding event, is the CEO of the online testing platform SimplyLearnt. She has held key positions at top organisations like Microsoft, Adobe and Cadence Design System and has worked on brands such as Adobe Premiere Elements, Microsoft Dot NET 3.0 and PSpice. Raghav Sood, who also judged the Scratch Coding event, is the founder of Appaholics, a development studio specialising in Mobile Applications, Augmented Reality, Image Processing, and Machine Learning. He authored his first book, Pro Android Augmented Reality, while still a student in our school. Ms. Pallavi Arora was a judge of the Poster Making Competition. A Graduate with a Diploma in Communication Design, and a specialization in Video Film Making, she has to her credit a lot of awards and felicitations. Mrs. Sarika Varma, the second judge for the Poster Making Competition, is an accomplished artist, art teacher and an educationist. Her aim has been to equip children with skills of communicating ideas, thoughts, and feelings through the visual medium of art and craft.

Ms. Suchi Mukherjee is a technophile and entrepreneur who iss rewriting the rules of the e-commerce game in India. She is the founder and CEO of LimeRoad.com and is the only Indian to have received the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship for studying Economics at Cambridge University in 1994. She subsequently procured her Master’s degree in Finance & Economics from the London School of Economics.

After proving her mettle in academia, Ms. Mukherjee went on to have successful stints at global brands such as eBay, Skype and Gumtree. LimeRoad is her latest adventure and was voted the ‘Coolest Start-Up of the Year, 2015’ by Business Today Magazine. This year, we had the privilege of having Ms. Mukherjee as our keynote speaker on ShriTeq.“Dig deep and find answers” was the essence of the inspirational session that Ms. Mukherjee had with the young children present. She emphasised that this quality was something that she loved, admired and respected, and wished for all children, including her own, to imbibe. Sharing anecdotes about her life experiences as a student and as an entrepreneur, she urged the children to “Begin now: find a problem that you want to solve, dig deep no matter how long it takes and find your own answers, for that is the process of growing, of sowing the seeds of a new idea, and of beginning something that no one else has thought of before.” We would like to thank Ruchi Ma’am for this article – your help has managed to add a few hours to our sleeping time tonight!

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Q. Which events are you organizing for ShriTeq 2016? A. I’m mainly organizing the Hackathon, but I’m also judging the Scratch Coding event and generally setting up the event. I helped introduce the event in the first year it was created. Q. What do you miss most about school?

A. *Laughs, then stares blankly* Nothing. Q. What changes have you noticed since you were back?

A. The bio-metric attendance system. Q. What was different about ShriTeq this year in comparison to the last few? A. It started off with just one Teq Quiz the first year so it’s great that they have expanded the event to more tech related activities.

Q. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

A. Too many options, but I’d say teaching myself how to code. Q. What’s been your most and least enjoyable moment so far? A. My most enjoyable moment was seeing the tunnel work. My least favourite moment was when we had problems with the Wi-Fi in the Hackathon. Q. What is one thing you want to invent that has already been invented? A. Self-lacing shoes. Nike made them last year, actually.

Q. Where do you see yourself in ten years?

A. Working on my own start-up or venture probably.